Titan Beauty (Levi x Reader)

37. Guilt

Levi managed to get her up on the horse, positioning her in front of him without losing speed. He had his arms around her waist, holding the leashes of the saddle in front.

"Wait, Levi, Erwin!" she began to yell in all the chaos. Erwin was riding parallel to them. "We have to wait for the others!" (y/n) yelled. To her surprise, they seemed to ignore her plea. They never did that, especially not Levi. They looked ahead with odd faces on.

"Levi... this is barely everyone, we have to help the rest! We're still in good shape-" she turned to Levi alone, but was interrupted by his strained voice.

"(y/n). There are no others. This is-, tch-, this is it.." he spoke to her from right behind, not needing to talk loudly. As she heard his words, so close to her ear, she knew he wasn't lying. She looked around frantically, trying to find the masses, but there was nothing of the sort. About half of the soldiers she saw when she was still on Reiner's back were left. That meant that not only did the scouting legion take a big hit, but the military police did as well. She saw a majority of scouts as opposed to the amount MP's. They had less experience with titans after all...

"No-, it can't be-" she muttered, to both Levi and herself. Levi grabbed her hand and squeezed it slightly, both to comfort and correct her. He placed her hand on the leash and wrapped his hand around hers, forcing her to grip the leash tightly.

"(y/n), focus, please. The rest of us remaining aren't out of this godforsaken mess yet. Look ahead." He spoke to her softly but sternly. He could feel her hand shaking as he held it. He didn't let go.

(y/n) tried to keep her breathing in check, but the deafening white noise of the wind rushing by as they rode and the galloping of the horses made her thoughts too coherent for her liking. She began to realize, that if she and Eren hadn't been caught, the rest wouldn't have had to retrieve them, and they wouldn't have died. Her carelessness caused this.

Levi and Hanji had warned us so explicitly, they warned us for exactly what happened!

As the realization became clearer, she noticed that she was holding Levi's hand so tightly that her nails had made indentations in his skin, close to drawing blood. He had refrained from saying anything about it.

He had trouble with seeing (y/n) so upset, so shaken by what the scouting legion really was. True, the casualty count had gone up even more the last couple of years, so (y/n) and all the new recruits were having the worse of it right from the beginning.

To be (y/age), and already be seen as the possible savior of humanity, and already have seen the things she has, is more than I expect anyone to just be able to handle..

He didn't know how he could possibly help her, so in his eyes all he was doing was watching her suffer from the sidelines. Levi didn't seem to understand that his presence, his being there alone was helping her more than anything else.

(y/n) looked shamefully at her hand and the marks on his she caused. She fully softened her grip, but against her expectations, Levi didn't let her take her hand away. He softly held her in place, and gently stroked his thumb up and down.

(y/n) shivered slightly and felt her eyes prickle, a familiar warning sign.

"THE WALL IS IN VIEW! LEAVE THE HORSES ON THE GROUND, FOCUS ON GETTING THE INJURED UP ASAP!" Erwin ordered.

As they reached the wall it was a race against the clock to get those who were injured the help they so drastically needed.

(y/n) noticed Eren and Mikasa who had already gotten off their horses. Eren was practically holding her up, she was that badly hurt.